Coconut Blackberry Icebox Cake (Food Memories of 2011, No. 13)

Every day in December, I'm writing a short post about some food memory from 2011, mostly to be more thankful for all the great food and drink I've been lucky enough to have this year.

Someone, and I dare not point fingers, posted this gorgeous photo to Twitter one day of a coconut cream icebox cake. My reaction: "Mine! I must have that cake!"

And so I made it, sloppily the first time, in an 8-by-8 inch Pyrex baking pan. In dim light, the shredded coconut piled on top of the dark blackberry syrup (I screwed up the layering) resembled uncooked shredded mozzarella on top of reddish-purple wine-stained tomato sauce. It looked like a freaking lasagna.

The layers are homemade coconut custard, graham crackers that dissolve a bit under the weight of the cream and soften into a thin cakey strip. Blackberries, strained of their seeds, make up the thinnest layer providing just a hint of fruity sweetness but a lot of color as the purplish black juice seeps into the layer below it. On top there ought to be a hefty layer of fresh whipped cream, but seeing as I'm not a huge fan of it, I just topped it off with more coconut custard and a light coating of whipped cream, just for looks.

Everyone loved it, and it didn't take too much effort to make. Because it's in an icebox cake, you can make a lot of the elements ahead of time and assemble the cake a few hours before you're ready to serve it. So I made it again.

And I think a third time. I've lost track. But the requests have started coming in again, and I think I'm due to repeat this one again soon.

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jilleduffy

I'm a writer originally from New York and currently living in the Washington, D.C. area. I cover technology, especially as it relates to productivity, efficiency, and motivation. Most of my writing on productivity lives at ProductivityReport.org.